Hunted in Holland

I am surprised to find that there are still people commenting on this film as late as 2021, I wasn't aware it was still available to view. It was made in 1960, when I was just ten years old and played the part of Annike den Helder. I watched it again two years ago, when my daughter arranged a private viewing at our local boutique cinema for a lot of my family and friends. I must admit, the acting is at most, wooden, but it was fun at the time, being chaperoned all over Holland and treated like royalty, chauffeur driven around and staying in some of the best hotels in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Watched this in the mid to late sixties on German TV and was always trying to find a copy. Is there anybody out there who has one and would be willing to make a copy for me? I'm looking for this one for more than 40 years. This would be a dream come true! My e-mail address is waldenpond88@hotmail.com.

The British Children's Film Foundation (CFF) produced lots of very good and very thrilling movies for kids in the fifties and until the mid sixties. Everything that has been made after 1966 is unfortunately not nearly as good as the early black & white films.

Rank Screen Services and Rayant Pictures were among the movie production companies who made movies for CFF.

The CFF has been founded by Mary Field.

I remember that one of the kids did hide the jewels in her teddy bear.

Made by the CFF for Saturday morning minor clubs.This is more of a travelogue with a rather ridiculous plot.The crooks ,with a gun,are scared by the kids throwing tomatoes.Sean Scully,from Australia,playing an English boy is rather too raucous and is not a very good actor.

One of the last features made by Ian Dalrymple's Wessex Productions is this lively travelogue in colour in which the credits inevitably appear over an Amsterdam barrel organ and the action (which at one point resembles 'The Twelve Chairs' substituting Dutch cheeses for chairs) also treats us to plenty of canals and windmills. The dialogue has plainly been post-synced back at Anvil Films (with the assistance of lots of narration and a busy score by Muir Matheson), with the result that it feels more like a continental film that has been dubbed into English than a native production.

Less preachy than most CFF adventures (although it anticipates the warning in 'Pulp Fiction' over thirty years later that guns handled carelessly can go off by accident), it interestingly reveals that sixty years ago in Amsterdam it was accepted practice for kids to ride their bikes on the pavement.

Both heroes are the sons of policemen, but in their absence go it alone to foil the usual gang of crooks, who are scarier than their British equivalent and have been trailing them in a big, imposing black car before being pelted with tomatoes. The film is enhanced rather than harmed as a travelogue by the onlookers frequently gathered in the background watching the filming.

I suppose there is a type of elderly female relative who would think that this is just the sort of movie to see with a youngster. It's filled with such lovely images of Holland. We are still supposed to call it Holland, aren't we? They haven't changed the name because it's an oppressive remnant of some colonial past? No? Well, that's nice. Sean Scully is a nice boy, a bit rambunctious, but he'll settle down, off to visit his pen pal, Jacques Verbrugge, who is so well behaved. He knows all the rules, and no doubt had a fine career as an EU bureaucrat. And then there's Sandra Spurr as Jacques' little sister. She looks so nice and neat and her shoes are so well polished! It's a shame they had to get involved with those diamond thieves, but they noticed them, and they actually rescued the diamonds and outwitted the thieves. Because, thieves aren't very bright, dear. They don't think, and if they did, they would make better plans and study hard and go to college. Now, sit quietly and watch the lovely movie, and if I doze off, don't wake me.